zarr
zarr
About
- Username
- zarr
- Joined
- Visits
- 5,381
- Last Active
Comments
-
BHVR has been addressing a few of my most complained-about grievances with the game of late, so I hope next up is the netcode situation. While moving authority to the server completely is likely too much to hope for, they should at least improve their validation techniques and employ said validation much earlier already than only on connections exceeding some 300ms. And yes, at the very, very least they should reinstate killer ping warnings in the lobby (>100ms) - why these have been removed in the first place beggars comprehension. Ideally they would just show everyone's ping in realtime, in the lobby and in trials.
-
I think to make the community cups more interesting, BHVR should implement a rule that forbids teams who have won previously to participate again with the same roster. Eternal has won most of the EU cups, I think.
Also, while it's definitely a highly questionable rule (albeit not as completely asinine as people make it out to be, either: a new survivor could be bugged in some way, and the two weeks are there as a general safety buffer to be able address any such potential issues before allowing the use in their tournaments), and rather poor sportsmanship on the other team for reporting on it, I do have a feeling that Eternal might well have done the very same thing had they lost to a team using Cage. In either case, this definitely should not have resulted in a DQ, that's utterly asinine indeed. Even replaying the match would have felt laughable, but it would still have been much more reasonable...
It is an unfortunate situation, and I do agree with edgarpoop who earlier in the thread talked to the fact that the ruling system complexity for DbD tournaments is a fairly unfortunate situation altogether and poses a barrier for many players to enjoy or indeed to succeed in that environment. Even with a by now fairly standardized ruleset between various tournaments, point penalties and restarts happen all the time. I haven't done a "study" on just how impactful that can end up being over the course of the tournaments, but I do believe that one of the things that sets the top teams apart and makes them more reliably succeed is the fact that they are intimately familiar with rulesets, having played under them for years. And this is not only about penalties and such either, it's also that they don't have to worry so much about committing ruling offenses, not spend as much time familiarizing themselves with the rules, which all can take away from playing to one's potential.
-
You have to harass survivors constantly with pods and pressure with teleports, they will be hard-pressed to find time to EMP regularly. While that can be a demanding multi-task, you can try doing it around a 3-gen to make things easier on yourself.
But once you do get the hang of it, it can be a blast, as both the map control and pressure on the survivors as well as the mechanics of Overclock can feel oppressively powerful, which is obviously fun for the killer player.
Good Singularity players perform perfectly well (meaning they almost never do not 4k, and while the same thing can be said for basically any killer in the hands of a good player, Singularity has performed fairly well in the comp setting as well).
-
It's clear they have "nerfed" pallet stun and DH hit validation at some point in the past (I think it went from a "first come first serve" basis where the server would simply favour whatever action arrived first, to a "timestamp" logic where it will actually compare client action timings), but these recent egregious instances I suspect have to do more so with the game servers having been rather volatile. Maybe the influx of players during the event has caused this, the servers are struggling to maintain a consistent connection to players, pings are higher and fluctuate, sometimes the servers outright experience freezes. These performance issues would also affect hit validation, of course.
-
Finally! Long, long overdue, but reason to celebrate.
-
It's usually easy to identify a 3-gen setup on your own. And if the killer is actually playing for such a setup, knowing about it won't matter. Deja Vu only shaves off a mere ~5s of repair time required, and that is only if you work on a gen alone from 0 to 100%.
Not having to search for gens on indoor maps can be nice, and a yellow bar is nice to look at. There's also something to be said about the benefit of instantly tackling a potential 3-gen setup before the killer thinks about playing for it, something many players wouldn't do without the perk incentivizing them to go for those gens. Still, if you are a reasonably good and smart player, you are better off using other perks.
-
Singularity's ability is oppressive for survivors, and EMPs are oppressive for Singularity.
This could be an interesting dynamic, but I do agree that some EMP nerfs are in order.
That said, I hope BHVR will be carefully monitoring the situation (ha...), because Singularity has some of the same 3-gen issues that the previous two killer releases brought with them. The only downside to using pods around a gen cluster is that it makes EMPs more effective, as they will regularly affect multiple pods and survivors. This balance should be kept in mind.
I also don't think EMPs are as oppressive to Singularity as it is sometimes made out to. Pods can be destroyed and replaced at will at any time, you don't even have to destroy them manually, you can just cycle through them. If a survivor EMPs themselves in chase, you can usually swiftly re-infect them. The only really annoying thing is that you can't reliably use pods for cross-map traversal/control, as disabled pods across the map are obviously not something you can do much about. This is also why 3-genning is such a concern, as it gets rid of this issue for Singularity, who can just stick around and constantly replace any disabled pods around the gen cluster.
Maybe an interesting rework for Singularity could be this, should it turn out that the "oppressive ability vs. means of disabling said ability" dynamic isn't quite doing it: Remove EMPs from the game. Now environmental pods automatically destroy themselves as soon as they have either infected a survivor or allowed Singularity to teleport to a survivor. Pods on survivors are also automatically destroyed after Singularity teleports to them.
Or maybe environmental pods should only destroy themselves if they are used to infect a survivor, not if they are used for teleports.
-
While it is true that proper survivor meta perk releases have been awfully sparse (a mere handful in these entire 7 years), Made For This does feel a little too strong.
3% doesn't sound like a lot, but if you think of it as "reduces the speed differential between the survivor and the killer by 20%", you get an idea of how significant it is. Take a starting distance of 10m - without MFT, it takes a killer ~16.6s to catch up; with MFT, it takes ~20.8s (both instances ignoring lunge): those 4.2s translate to an additional 16.8m the survivor can run before the killer has caught up, meaning it will often be much more likely they reach a pallet or window. The survivor always gets to cover 20% more ground in a chase than they otherwise would have.
The secondary, tacked-on effect of MFT is also pretty impactful, it can allow for various clutch plays, and has some good synergies (most of all Soul Guard and We're Gonna Live Forever, fortunately they've made For The People not work with MFT).
What's additionally problematic about the perk is that it particularly benefits good survivors that can abuse the extra catch-up time, as well as being particularly detrimental for M1 killers. But even killers that have chase abilities can struggle, as they usually get slowed down while readying their powers, and the extra distance the survivor makes during this time due to MFT can change the dynamic of the chase quite a bit.
That all said, I don't think MFT is as busted or problematic as it is sometimes being made out to. First of all, players that are good in chase and can really reliably abuse the extra speed are rare, the vast majority of survivors you'll meet would benefit more from Overcome or Sprint Burst most of the time, as those perks allow them to actually just hold W without much of a care. Then MFT obviously prohibits the use of a fair few Exhaustion perks, which are the most impactful chase perks, and even if you can use some of the more selective ones alongside it (such as Dead Hard or Balanced Landing), as soon as you activate them you lose the entire functionality of MFT. Blood Echo, Fearmonger and Exhaustion add-ons further play into this. And in general it can be said that chase perks will never be as strong as second chance, macro or gen perks, because they only give value if you actually get chased, and in an actual chase scenario at that (not in a deadzone, not caught out by surprise, not in a scenario where the killer will just injure and leave you again). So if BHVR is to err on the side of "a little too strong" to finally bring a meta-worthy survivor perk again, it's good if they do so in case of a chase perk. Dead Hard was a ridiculously strong chase perk and had been around for years and years, and while people were right to complain about it, it didn't ruin the killer experience (competent killers still won most of their matches, good killers still almost never lost). Most players just aren't great in chase, so much so that DH was just as if not even more famous for creating comical situations of survivors messing up as it was for being busted. Plus chase perks are usually the most fun perks to use (DH certainly was), as the chase is the most exciting and engaging gameplay aspect.
Anyway, a nerf will probably come at some point, so here is what I would hope that may look like:
Simply remove the Endurance effect of the perk. It isn't the stronger part, but it just being there in addition does push the perk into "feels a little too strong" territory.
Or reduce the speed increase to 2%.
Or make it so that instead of being disabled by Exhaustion, the perk now causes Exhaustion whenever you are injured, but it itself is not affected by Exhaustion. This would make it much more difficult to use Exhaustion perks alongside MFT, as you cannot guarantee to get use out of your Exhaustion perk while healthy (particularly of course given that you cannot always heal up again, and that you are injured when you get unhooked).
-
I think one change that could remedy the 3-gen issue (which you really cannot get around, it sits at the core of her flawed gameplay design and who knows how many years it will still take for BHVR to do anything about this as a general issue, and what that will look like) would be to make it so that while a survivor is working on a gen, their lock-on meter doesn't fill. This would make it so that drones are not able to defend gens with their mere presence, but the killer would still benefit from droning gens due to the stealth and tracking they provide. As a trade-off, they could make it so that the lock-on meter doesn't regress, until the survivor gets downed or hacks a drone. Survivors would then have to be careful to manage their meters, and still be obligated to hack drones. It would also improve the utility of drones in chases, as you could then build up the meter in chase reliably. The Exposed timer should not reset when entering a drone zone though, that's already a bit ridiculous and would only be even more so then. But it could be paused for the duration of being inside a drone zone.
-
3-genning is one of worst things in this game, very uninteractive and unengaging since the killer will never commit to a chase but just keep returning to their gens looking for free downs. Depending on the gen cluster, the perks and the killer character, this can go on indefinitely until the game server closes the session. Often survivors will simply let themselves get killed or disconnect instead. Just a ridiculous flaw in game design. And yet BHVR isn't doing anything about it, even though it's been a thing for 7 years (oh wait, they've buffed Deja Vu by 1%, now it shaves off a whooping ~5 seconds of repair time if you work a gen from 0 to 100% alone, that's totally gonna help break a 3-gen!).
And the solution seems so simple, I don't know why BHVR can't implement a rule in the procedural spawn algorithm that prevents 3 gens from being within a certain perimeter. If the current gen spawns don't allow for that, just introduce more possible spawns. I think it would be beneficial anyway to have much more random generator spawns such that survivors have to spend more time looking for them. Of course there are some maps that would need a more specific approach, such as Gideon, but that too should be simple enough.
Alternative solutions could be either to simply add an 8th generator, such that the killer would have to defend 4 gens when only 1 is left to do, or to give survivors the ability to move generators at a slow speed, an interaction during which nobody would be able to work on the gen being relocated. There should obviously be compensatory killer buffs alongside this, such as an increased base gen regression rate. I'm sure players would be happy to accept various general killer buffs if impossible 3-gens were to leave the game for it.
-
Can't say I personally have noticed this all too frequently, but to wager a guess:
Long ago, BHVR talked about wanting to implement cross-region matchmaking to completent the MMR system and find closer matches. It tends to take them ages to do stuff, so this might be them testing such a feature now.
I would want to note that the MMR system seems to have been butchered to the point of basically not existing anymore anyway; they've either outright disabled it, lowered the effective cap so much that essentially everyone arrives at it, or the matchmaker itself just doesn't care much about the rating anymore. Either way, why expand matchmaking pools across regions to help a system that doesn't work to make close matches to begin with.
Also: It would be ridiculous for them to allow cross-region matchmaking without first finally tackling the huge issue that is killer client-sided hit registration. It's plagued the game since its inception, but at least things are still bearable if most players you meet are below 80ms. That would change with cross-region MM.
Them (ridiculously) removing the "high killer ping" warning from the lobbies for no apparent reason could also be in preparation of cross-region MM, although that's been gone for a while, and is probably just BHVR being BHVR.
-
Matchmaking is awful, the MMR cap prevents the system from doing anything but separating the newest of players from the rest, and these days it seems like MMR is just disabled altogether. A good SWF can go on winstreaks spanning hundreds of matches too, due to that. Granted, good SWFs are much, much more rare than good killers, simply because it takes 4 good players to come together.
That said, Blight is objectively overpowered, good Blights 4k in tournaments all the time too, and even the strongest of SWFs would not be able to get a 1000-match winstreak, let alone 4-escape streak. That's altogether unheard of in any even approachingly competitive game. That Blight's add-ons haven't been rebalanced yet is mindboggling. That they haven't touched his base mechanics is likely owed to the fact that the person that originally worked on them is gone, and they are scared to mess stuff up, or too lazy to deal with it.
Blight is pretty difficult to master though, and there is counterplay, so against most Blights you'll encounter in pubs you can still compete perfectly well if you practice and improve, and it's actually fun to do so. Adrenaline Vial, Compound Thirty-Three and - if to a lesser extent - Alchemist Ring can carry mediocre Blights to be as oppressive as better Blights however, and they really should be getting addressed asap.
-
You can't eliminate "checkspots" because they are literally just markers for the distance from which a killer can hit you. Or angles that have to exist simply by the logic of how a tile can be set up. Changing these things would usually mean making tiles pure 50/50s, which is not good game design.
Many of the holes and cracks in walls that allow survivors to see the killer also allow the killer to see the survivors, which is actually often more of an advantage for the killer if they're not a pure M1 killer.
I do think that Autohaven tiles should be higher, being able to see the killer over them is not good.
-
The Dead Hard nerf is fine. It is not a strong enough perk anymore to justify using it over other Exhaustion perks, which was the goal, as that encourages perk diversity. You only get to use DH at most two times in a trial, which is already a huge downside over all the other Exhaustion perks, which shine precisely because you get constant value out of them. Even more importantly perhaps, you don't get to use it in the first chase, and the first chase is usually the most important of the game. On top of that, Deep Wound nullifies DH, so if you get tunnelled off hook it might not do anything for you. If you get camped on hook, you might only get it one time, or never. If you don't get hooked before the round is already in its concluding stages, you might also never get it. And then on top of that there's killer abilities, perks, and add-ons (as well as latency...) that can rob you of your chance to make much of any use of your DH even in the limited instances where you have do access to it. Same for instadown/Exposed, should you heal after getting unhooked.
Given that, I'd even say DH could be back to 1 second duration, and unhook endurance should become unhook invincibility (with removed collision).
DH can still be used, but I personally wouldn't use it without also using another Exhaustion perk and Decisive Strike alongside it, which already takes up 3 perk slots.
Circle Of Healing was overnerfed, in its current state it is not worth using. I would simply make it so that it enables survivors to heal at normal self-healing speed in its range (32 seconds), and limit the 50% healing speed boost to altruistic heals. I don't ultimately care so much that Circle is gone now for its own sake (although it had been a bit of a saving grace for solo), but with it, the other Boon perks are not viable anymore either, as those had really only been worthwhile alongside Circle. So at the very least, I would buff the other Boon perks now, such that anyone would even consider spending the time to find and bless totems just for those.
Med-kit nerfs are welcome, but BHVR's approach seems very haphazard. Now all med-kits are virtually identical, and most add-ons do nothing whatsoever worthwhile. I think they could have kept the charges how they had been, and simply made self-healing with a med-kit take 32 seconds. Then add-ons could be used to more significantly change the purpose of med-kits, with some add-ons allowing very quick self-heals but coming with charge penalties such that you can only get one heal out of it, or others that disable the ability to heal yourself with the med-kit (or increase the time it takes to do so significantly), while increasing charge efficiency and healing speed on altruistic heals tremendously. There could also be add-ons that show you the auras of injured survivors and their healing progress indicated by their auras, or show your aura to injured survivors, or that grant bonuses when completing a heal with the med-kit, such as brief Endurance or Haste. There's a lot of things they could have done that would make med-kits much more interesting and exciting than they are now.
-
Survivors should be able to kill themselves in the dying state if they're either all in the dying state (inlcuding being the last survivor in the trial), or if they're one of two remaining survivors. Would improve the gameplay experience a lot.
-
It's mindboggling they are still in the game. Do nothing but encourage hardcamping, are vulnerable to latency and a coinflip at best even without. Create an awkward non-gameplay stand-off. Also lead to the hooked survivor getting animation-spammed, if they're in struggle stage, which is a grating experience. Still glitched after all these years, not allowing a third survivor to unhook for the duration of the animation.
The killer already gets a guaranteed down on hook trades (especially now without Dead Hard), and hardcamping is something that should have long been rebalanced anyway, there's no reason to reward facecamping with an even more game-deciding benefit. Mindbogglingly bad game design.
-
Overall I'm not particularly fazed by it, it didn't end up changing a whole lot about the game because they went back on the base healing changes. Nothing in it is really bad, but it's also nothing really exciting, there's not a lot actually changing and most of the things that did are really rather uninspired.
Map Rework: Autohaven Wreckers
Contrary to what I'd expected, I'm actually enjoying the Autohaven changes a fair bit. Blood Lodge is weird, I think they could have done better with its layout, but other than that all of the Autohavens now play pretty well, they have less deadzones. Resting Place is still Resting Place, but the "edge map" fillers help improve how that map plays.
They've seemingly also messed with the spawn patterns on other maps however, and I've had some particularly barren Mac Millans.
Light-Killer Interactions
While some of these I'd agree with, nerfing flashlights (and firecrackers/flashbangs) is the last thing they should be doing. They are arguably the weakest item in the game because they encourage survivors to go for risky plays rather than sit on gens, and they are also the most skillful, interactive and fun. Taking away gameplay interactions is lame, there should if anything be more, and particularly when it comes to items the game's just been stale for years and years. That they even went and removed the flashlight interactions for Nurse is pretty crazy. Another case of the game getting to be less interesting " for consistency's sake".
Killer Tweaks
Inconsequential for the most part.
Perk Updates
I don't think Pain Resonance needed nerfing, nor Call Of Brine. Overcharge could have been reworked to actually have a difficult skill check rather than passively increase regression rate. 3-genning is the issue, not COB and OC, they should address 3-gen spawns and some of the killers that excel at defending them instead. If they wanted to make Pain Res a perk that rewards "fair play" more, they should have made it so it causes 20% regression on every fresh hook, but that going down to 10% as soon as anyone is hooked for the second time. Either way, now that none of these perks are worth using anymore, everyone's just gonna be on Corrupt and Deadlock.
The Dead Hard nerf is welcome, I'm glad to see more perk diversity due to people venturing out to use other Exhaustion perks and exploring their synergies. But I do feel like now that it is a two-time use perk (at most), its duration could be increased to 1 second again. I also think unhook Endurance should become unhook invincibility, because Deep Wound overwrites a variety of effects (DH, BT, OTR, Renewal, Resurgence, and more), such that it actually encourages the killer to immediately go after the unhooked survivor. As long as they remove collision during those 10 seconds of invincibility, it would be a tremendous improvement.
The Circle nerf is unfortunate. It is not worth using anymore, and due to that, neither are the other Boon perks, since they had almost exclusively been used alongside Circle. They're just not impactful enough on their own to warrant spending time finding and blessing totems for, and they should be buffed. Circle was also overnerfed. Making it so a self-heal in it takes 32 seconds would have already been more than sufficient. That its speed boost now doesn't even apply to self-healing interactions is just the nail in its coffin. I do think a meta shift from regression more toward something centered around healing can be interesting, but it encourages some pretty boring strategies, such as hit-and-running and 3-genning, while also collaterally making camping and tunnelling easier, so personally I'd prefer if they were to rework perks to create a meta that rewards "fair play", such as with my Pain Res suggestion, or buffing Grim Embrace, BBQ, just anything to create top-tier perks that promote going for fresh hooks right off the bat.
The Gearhead and Overzealous changes are whatever. Still very mediocre (at best) perks among a mountain of other such perks.
Med-kit Update
While med-kit nerfs had been needed, these are very lazy and uninspired. That it took them this long only to come out with something this not-thought-through is disappointing. All med-kits are now virtually identical (the only difference between a brown and purple med-kit is now ~1 second in altruistic healing time), most add-ons are painfully negligible in their impact. Again, items had already been lacking in interesting design that yields exciting gameplay, now both flashlights and med-kits have been made more boring. This also makes the "grind" worse, adding to the amount of useless "filler" stuff in bloodwebs.
And people are still not gonna be using med-kits to heal others except for edge-case scenarios, the couple of seconds saved on that are not at all worth it over the ability to heal yourself. The very least they could have done if their plan was for med-kits to revolve more around altruistic healing is to increase the speed on that many-fold.
Bloodweb Improvements
...are great. But ideally they'd also remove the lengthy level-up animations between every web.
-
I think Nurse is fairly fine now, overall. She's certainly still above and beyond all other killers (except Blight, due to his addons), and really good Nurse players are still way overpowered (Knightlight 300(?) match win streak addonless and perkless, although this is of course in no small part due to matchmaking being awful), but getting rid of her ability to utilize Exposed has absolutely been a game changer. It had been unfathomably ridiculous that a killer like Nurse could down people in one hit. Imagine the same on Blight, everyone would instantly realize it's ludicrous. Now that she actually has to chase through 2 health states (or 3, before the Dead Hard nerf), she is much less oppressive and has to go through many more motions. Which is especially notable since recharge and range add-ons are no more.
That said, there are still some issues, I think. Her lunge range out of blinks makes it a sort of third blink, it's too forgiving in my opinion and reducing it by, say, 33% would be the perfect way to tame her, making her more challenging to play in the process (although the latter is probably precisely why BHVR wouldn't do it, as it'd make her even less noob and console-friendly). Alas, instead they went and brought an add-on that increases her lunge range...
Pallets should be a more reliable resource to use against Nurse. Stunning her out of blinks, blink hits and fatigue should work more consistently (or at all), and it should cause her to go through the stun animation, only after which her blink charges should start replenishing. Fatigue overriding stuns also makes Head On much less viable against Nurse.
Nowhere To Hide is pretty overtuned on Nurse. I really like the perk and wouldn't want it nerfed, but on Nurse it just equals free and easy hits that survivors can do next to nothing against, and this is particularly true because NTH's aura reveal range travels with the killer for its duration. Maybe just make it not work on Nurse specifically. xD At least there's Distortion, I suppose.
3-second Decisive Strike doesn't do much of anything against Nurse. It should be back to 5 seconds anyhow (and maybe even proc up two two times, so after each unhook).
The Dead Hard nerf benefits Nurse tremendously. While there was some counterplay (and laghits...), DH was still a really reliable tool against Nurse, so much so that it was essentially a third health state against her. Without that, she'll be much more dangerous. Dead Hard can still be used of course, but only at most two times per match (and if they aren't using another Exhaustion perk alongside it, they won't have any in many of their chases). Plus if Nurse tunnels right off hook, she can put the survivor into Deep Wound anyway, nullifying DH. I think the 10 seconds of unhook Endurance should become unhook invincibility, such that it doesn't clash with Off The Record and DH (or stuff like Renewal or Resurgence, for that matter). Removing collision for these 10 seconds would be ideal.
That they've removed the flashlight interactions with Nurse now is honestly just mindboggling.
-
Without Circle and with the increased healing time and decreased med-kit charges, I expect hit-and-run as well as 3-genning to be rampant, two of the most boring strategies as they rely on rarely committing to chases and instead just repeatedly injuring people, leaving them and trying to catch them out of position for free downs. Sloppy Butcher as well as the various Mangled add-ons being the defining elements of that meta, of course. Jolt might also see a surge in usage (pun intended). Slugging will be more attractive as well, as healing up a survivor from the dying state will also take longer. Sloppy, STBFL, Jolt could be the new M1 meta. (But one can also still just use Corrupt, Deadlock and No Way Out, which are as amazing as ever.)
Against those strategies, remaining injured is not really the play, so I for one don't expect to see Adrenaline and Resilience become as ubiquitous as Dead Hard and - to a lesser extent - Circle had been. Sprint Burst will definitely be the most commonly used Exhaustion perk, and not only because it is arguably the best, but precisely because it can get you out of positions that would otherwise entail free hits. Maybe alongside Vigil. I also think Built To Last with med-kits will be seeing much more play than it does currently. SWFs will probably have dedicated Autodidact users.
Expect to see many more toolboxes and Brand New Parts. With med-kits, Syringes and Styptics getting nerfed, toolboxes and BNPs will be all the more attractive, particularly because they help with breaking up 3-gen clusters (or just rushing out gens against what would otherwise be a long war of attrition with the hit-and-run strategy).
Any player on either side can still be totally fine using a variety of builds and strategies, however. These things are really not that rigid, the "meta" isn't as defined as people make it out to be, and ultimately the matchmaking simply is such that not only are matchups and loadouts much of a tossup every time, but a good or even just competent player can do well even without perks altogether. I do think the healing nerfs hit solo queue particularly hard, however. Reliably being able to heal up was a sort of saving grace in solo matches, without that things will get dicey quickly. Bond, Aftercare, Autodidact, We'll Make It are perks people should be using much more often.
-
@RainehDaze said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3339505#Comment_3339505
Terminus's big problem is that it's time-limited. Otherwise, it'd actually be good for deterring brazen save attempts.
Yeah, I agree that Terminus - while decent and definitely underrated - often doesn't feel potent enough because its timer is only 30 seconds after the gates are opened. I think they should increase that to 1 minute, to actually make the endgame much more dicey for survivors, forcing them either to attempt rescue plays while still injured, or at least to delay their rescue plays until the collapse time is actually getting to be a problem. I'm not sure I would remove the timer entirely though, not least because at that point it funnily enough would often probably accomplish the opposite of what one may want it to - it will just make survivors leave asap rather than even attempt to go for any rescues.
Still, I really don't think endgame-oriented gameplay is any less viable for killers now than it used to be just because NOED was nerfed. NOED is still actually really rather strong, STBFL got indirectly buffed and can fulfil a similar role of being able to keep up pressure and snowball in the endgame, No Way Out is great, and the remaining endgame perks have always been gimmicks that should be buffed anyway. Oh, and not to mention, no DS (or OTR) in the endgame anymore. So yeah, even ignoring that endgame builds/strats had never been particularly popular to begin with, them supposedly being less viable now is definitely not a reason for an increase in tunnelling.
-
I think the major reasons tunnelling is more widespread now than it had been in the past are the Decisive Strike nerf as well as simply a much grown awareness of tunnelling being the most effective killing strategy.
The Barbecue "nerf" has certainly had a negative impact on the game, giving killers less incentive to leave the hook or spread out hooks early, but I also don't believe it's had a huge impact. And particularly not on tunnelling, because as tunnelling has always been the best way to get a 4k, the desire to hook every survivor at least once is of course not a deterrent against tunnelling.
I also don't believe camping has gotten significantly less effective, let alone to a point where it has made tunnelling more attractive. Camping is in fact also more common than before, again mostly because of a rise in awareness of it being one of the most effective killing strategies. Usually camping and tunnelling actually go hand in hand. The idea that Reassurance would have made camping tangibly less impactful is honestly pretty silly. Not only does the perk not see ubiquitous use whatsoever, but it's regularly not even all that impactful against camping, for that you pretty much need multiple Reassurances and a team on voice comms coordinating its use, i. e. something you basically never see. Unhook endurance actually makes tunnelling more difficult than before, not camping, so it would support the opposite conclusion.
I don't see how "nice guy" builds have gotten any worse. BBQ wasn't actually nerfed, it just doesn't give extra BP anymore. Weasel isn't any more of a "nice guy" perk than, say, Call Of Brine, and Nowhere To Hide actually does encourage leaving hooks and seeking out survivors just like BBQ used to. Otz doesn't really explain why he thinks perks like Make Your Choice (which was never particularly popular at all to begin with?) have now totally fallen out of favour and would be less viable. No Way Out also still is just as viable. And while NOED did get nerfed, now we have Terminus, another actually rather potent endgame perk. This entire argument doesn't make much sense to me. Although I would agree that "hit and run" playstyles have gotten to be less effective with the advent of Circle Of Healing as well as a rise in med-kit usage.
Gen speed really hasn't gotten more problematic. Gen times have been increased, Brine, Eruption, Pain Resonance, Corrupt, Deadlock, Pentimento are slowdown perks that can hang with the best there's ever been, toolboxes have been nerfed substantially, and the only survivor perk that actually speeds up gens significantly is Hyperfocus, and not only do you need Stake Out alongside it in order for it to actually be good, but you of course also have to consistently hit increasingly difficult great skill checks, something even veterans struggle to do. I barely see people use the perk and when they do they often don't even get a lot of value out of it, especially considering that it makes them miss skill checks more often, something that can actually more than nullify any and all of its potential gen time reduction.
Decisive Strike used to be a great deterrent against tunnelling because the 5-second stun actually allowed the survivor to make so much distance that they could waste too much of the killer's time for it to be an efficient strategy anymore (including the possibility of losing the killer altogether). Now there is no reason to fear DS anymore. Don't get me wrong, it is still a decent perk, certainly much better than people make it out to be, but all it does is give the survivor another chance at an immediate chase, without any favourable distance, let alone the opportunity to make the killer lose track. So worst case scenario for the killer is they have to outplay the survivor at a tile again, they don't have to invest any time catching up to or looking for them. As long as you know you aren't dealing with a really good survivor, DS is a mild inconvenience at worst and doesn't do much to lessen the incredible efficiency of tunnelling someone out. Another issue is that people simply aren't using DS nearly as often anymore to begin with, partially because it's much worse than it used to be, partially because they think it's worse than it actually is. Plus there are killers that do more or less nullify the perk, such as Nurse, Blight, Spirit, Clown, Freddy, Wesker at max. infection. Off The Record isn't nearly as potent as old DS because base endurance already cancels out the perk's primary effect and because one hit worth of distance is not nearly as much as old DS granted, especially not against a variety of the killer abilities or STBFL.
There's been more popular and regular tournament DbD in the last two years than ever before, and it was much more on the forefront of the collective community's consciousness, not least due to BHVR's official community cups, as well as multiple high-profile streamers covering the topic repeatedly. Camping and tunnelling are the bread and butter strategies in competitive environments because they simply are the most effective strategies if your goal is to kill as many survivors as possible as consistently as possible, and the community has wisened up to this much more so than in the past, where it was much more common for the average player to think of camping and tunnelling as things that are akin to "throwing the game just to annoy someone in particular".
I think camping and tunnelling are important parts of the game and integral to its balance and shouldn't be removed altogether, but rebalancing is definitely in order, particularly because they are the bane of the solo survivor experience. Rebalancing meaning some nerfs for camping and tunnelling along with compensatory buffs to other aspects of killer gameplay. For tunnelling, they've actually already done a really good thing by implementing the 10-second unhook endurance. I personally do not have a problem with getting tunnelled, chase interaction is literally what I want to have, but it's still problematic because someone getting tunnelled means the other survivors will have little to no interaction with the killer, and if the person getting tunnelled is outmatched/unlucky/the killer too oppressive, the round can be a foregone conclusion without the other survivors even being able to do much of anything about it. There could be more comprehensive rebalancing for camping and tunnelling, but it would already go a long way to buff DS again (either by increasing the stun timer back to 5 seconds, or making it so that DS can activate up to two times, like OTR), make unhook endurance unhook invincibility instead (such that it doesn't clash with OTR, but remove survivor collision during those 10 seconds), as well as remove hook grabs. Compensation for these changes could be a buff for Weasel that allows it to remove 50% progress of the gen furthest away from the hook with progress on it (which the perk would highlight), a buff for BBQ that increases the killer's movement speed by 1% for every token (it loses a token whenever a survivor is hooked for the second or third time), a buff for Grim Embrace that makes it block generators for 10 seconds for every unfinished gen remaining on the map at the time of its activation, the ability to cancel a pallet break action, stuff like that.
Tunnelling definitely isn't as big of a gameplay issue as camping though. Tunnelling means consecutive chases, it still provides interactive and engaging gameplay. If you are good in chases, bring DH + DS and you won't mind getting tunnelled. If you aren't good in chases, bring SB + OTR, or even things like Lucky Break or Dance With Me that enable you to attempt to lose the killer. It's not ideal that perks are needed to deal with these things sometimes, but at least there do exist ways to better deal with it.
-
@Xernoton said:
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3338874#Comment_3338874
The 2 gens at Myers house aren't a bug though, are they? I don't remember there ever being less than 2 gens. A third gen nearby however is weird. That definitely shouldn't happen. I haven't seen this yet but you're definitely right. With the right perks any killer could drag this out until the 1h mark (or however long it takes).
I know we joke about DBD's spaghetti code a lot but this is beginning to worry me. How can they create new content, when that might somehow create bugs with completely unrelated things? I imagine this is only going to get worse, if they can't find a way to prevent this.
As @SpaghettiVase pointed out, it used to spawn the gen upstairs in the Myers house, and the house had more windows that could spawn up there as well as the ability to walk out back. I suspect BHVR intentionally closed everything up there (even though I have no clue why they would, the upstairs windows weren't problematic and the ability to walk out from the roof actually gave killers more counterplay to the back porch window), but having the two gens spawn right next to each other every time is most likely not intended, they're probably just not aware of it. In either case it definitely shouldn't be like that, 2 gens should never spawn that close to one another because that basically makes them 1 gen for the purposes of defending them, so any third gen being even remotely close can make it an unbreakable cluster.
-
@Xernoton said:
They didn't even killswitch Twins. After 2 months! They don't need to killswitch every little bugged thing but come on! Twins are literally unplayable!
Adrenaline is also bugged to take priority over Terminus and I don't think this needs to be killswitched. Just as Sloppy and Lullaby. It's stupid and it should be fixed asap but the games are still playable. Technically the same can be said for RPD but since 3 gen strats are at an all time high in terms of effectiveness this might go too far to stay even until they get around to fixing it.
https://forums.bhvr.com/dead-by-daylight/discussion/comment/3338791#Comment_3338791
What happened to Haddonfield? I had a game there just the other day and it looked fine to me.
Ideally the killswitch is used for stuff they can fix in like 1-2 weeks, but knowing that it's usually months, yeah I guess I wouldn't want them to hit stuff like that with the killswitch either. But Sloppy is pretty killswitchable given how abusable it is on some killers.
Haddonfield spawns 2 gens right next to each other in the Myers house every single time, and a third gen not far from that that is also in a deadzone. It's the same as with RPD currently - if the killer wants to defend those gens until the server closes the session, they can.
-
Lullaby is such a bad perk its effect being retained at whatever amount of tokens it was cleansed with would honestly be a welcome buff. But yeah, these things as well as RPD and Haddonfield not being killswitched until they can fix them is just bad dev work. They take ages to create these tools, and then don't use them? "Beta features" was 1 singular feature for like a year, killswitch is not being used even if there's blatant abuse of issues like this.
-
You can outplay many survivors on many pallets even without an ability altogether. May surprise you, but most random survivors can even be outplayed on gym pallets relatively reliably. And pretty much all killers have an ability to play around pallets with. What gives?
Most players also never really learn about zoning. It's a very basic aspect of killer skill and yet it's not common that people are in the habit of doing it. Micro and macro zone survivors at pallets, meaning that even if you are going to break the pallet and can't play around it, put yourself into a position where after the break, the survivor will be as close as possible to you, and as far away as possible from anything they can play afterwards. An easy example for macro-zoning is if you are chasing a survivor at a pallet tile at the edge of a map - you wanna break the pallet from the inside of the map, forcing the survivor to the edge away from everything else. Micro-zoning is where you maneuver at the pallet such that once you start breaking it, the survivor has to run back into you and gets less distance.
In general it can definitely be said that some maps spawn way too many pallets, others too few. I don't know why there isn't a simple algorithm in place that spawns pallets in a ratio relation to the amount of tiles of the given map, just like there (supposedly) is for hooks. If they make sure there is a roughly similar amount of differently "safety-rated" pallet tiles that can spawn across the maps, they will on average be comparable. Maybe they tried that and it just doesn't work well? But yeah, that I can go from an Eyrie with 25 pallets to a Torment Creek with 12 is just... silly. There is something to be said about differentiating the gameplay experience from map to map and match to match, but the disparity shouldn't be quite that big I don't think.
-
There are some instances where new DH can be better than old DH (such as it resetting bloodlust), but It is absolutely more balanced than before. It lasts less long, can't be used for distance, doesn't counter a variety of killer powers outright anymore and instead is actually countered by a variety of killer powers, as well as clashing with various survivor perks/mechanics. They even "nerfed" server validation for DH for some reason.
That said, while DH is one of the most fun perks to use, I do think it's unhealthy for the game. Not even necessarily because it is too strong (which it however is too, in the right hands anyway), but because it prevents people from using most of any of the other Exhaustion perks. Without DH, we would be seeing a lot more perk variety because not only would people use the other Exhaustion perks, but those other Exhaustion perks have yet other perks they synergize with that we would in turn also be seeing more of (think Sprint Burst with Vigil, Smash Hit with Parental Guidance, Overcome with Lucky Break, Lithe with Dance With Me, Head On with Quick & Quiet).
So yeah, I think actually just "deleting" DH would be good. Although I guess maybe making it so DH only protects against ability hits would be a way to keep it essentially like it is now and yet still make it not be used nearly as often anymore.
-
All the killer players I know still win almost every single match pretty decisively. It really hasn't changed much at all. I haven't played a ton of killer recently myself, but in the rounds that I did play I also haven't noticed a big difference.
The idea that the HUD changes would have bumped "solo" to "SWF" play couldn't be sillier. For starters, the issue with inefficiency in random groups has always come down to randoms just being pretty bad and... unclever at the game. Like, the concept of "touching generators" isn't novel, you don't need a HUD icon to realize that doing the one singular objective in the game is probably a good idea. And yet randoms almost never do with any dilligence or let alone efficiency. The HUD info doesn't change this, most of the time it if anything just makes solo feel even more hopeless because you can instantly see just how useless people are.
And that's just with regards to the simplest, most obvious aspect of the game. The icons really don't help survivors navigate much more difficult scenarios, such as hook camp and gen control scenarios. The amount of coordination an SWF group on voice comms can have in these and a thousand other scenarios is worlds removed from whatever the icons can provide. Preemptively deciding who goes for the unhook and when and from where they may best approach in relation to the killer location, calling out killer perks, add-ons, whereabouts, behaviour patterns, used pallets, locations of gens that are being worked on so as to avoid taking the chase over there, gate locations, attacking specific gens together, coordinating the use of perks, and so on and so forth. There's a sheer endless amount of crucial information that teams can share at a moment's notice, as well as countless ways in which they can coordinate plays, that random groups will simply never even be able to dream of.
Anything short of actual base-game voice comms means the gap between solo and SWF remains gigantic. And even with voice comms there would still be a significant divide, because SWF groups are premade, and therefore not only bypass the horrendous matchmaking system that has an MMR cap so low that it basically doesn't matter past a certain, wholly inadequate point, but also get to coordinate their builds down to the last slot. Premades will also usually play together frequently, develop strategies, natural coordination, "roles", call-out systems, and such. And even just being on the same page about using voice comms at all would still separate premades from randoms.
Solo and SWF are just completely different games altogether and will always be. And I think it's actually a good thing, the solo experience is much more chaotic, much closer to an actual "horror" theme, thrown into unknown and uncertain circumstances and having to make do with whatever you get and whatever happens, needing to rely much more on intuition, game sense and coordination skills with strangers. Whereas SWF is much more strategic and competitive, can make for an actually competitively compelling format. That of course doesn't mean the situation can't be improved however, solo is much too often much too weak, and SWF can be much too strong.
Matchmaking improvements are the first thing that would help the solo experience. The MMR cap is too low, the matchmaker not strict enough. Camping and tunnelling are the bane of solo matches, and nerfs to them (compensated for with buffs to other aspects of killer gameplay) would improve the game overall. Hook grabs should be removed for one very important thing, as not only are they a bullshit mechanic in general, but they necessitate there being at least 2 survivors for a somewhat safe unhook in camping scenarios, which spells trouble for solos. If basekit Kindred is too much (which I do think it may be, not least because it will take a good bit of the aforementioned "horror" aspects out of the playing experience), perhaps use the icons to better inform survivors of what's happening around a hook. For example with a killer icon on the hooked survivor if the killer is within 16m of the hook, and a hook icon on any survivor coming within 32m of a hooked survivor. Show healing and gate opening progress on the icons. Show survivor loadouts to other survivors in the lobby, or at the very least on the loading screen or match info overlay. Implement more perks notifications that actually allow fellow survivors to utilize them (e. g. if a survivor is hooked for the first time and has an active Deliverance, notify all other survivors of this fact).
For SWF, loadout restrictions would be a good way to lower the power ceiling, especially because it would also lead to more loadout diversity.
-
Circle is the only Boon that regularly sees any use at all, the others at most only ever do alongside Circle, in a manner of "if I'm gonna bless a totem anyway, might as well bring one of these too". If they nerf it more, it'll just put Boons into obscurity entirely. Although I do think that it shouldn't increase the speed of med-kit (self-)heals.
I think the only real problematic perks left on the survivor side are Dead Hard and Sprint Burst. I like using them because they are fun to use and impactful, but I do think it would be better for the game if BHVR basically just removed them, allowing other Exhaustion perks to see play.
-
There effectively is no general hit validation. If the killer is laggy, they'll hit you from farther away on your end. If the killer has a ridiculously high ping of 300+ms they sometimes do get their hits denied by the server, but even then only rarely. Latency is completely killer-sided on hit reg, because hit reg is being done on the killer client.
There is hit validation specific to Dead Hard and pallet stuns, but I'm afraid they have recently "nerfed" this. In my understanding, it used to be that it worked simply on a "first come first serve" basis, where if the DH actuation/pallet stun of the survivor arrived on the server earlier than the killer's hit event, the latter would be overruled within that timing window, and vice versa. Now they seemingly employ a sort of lag compensation technique, where they will check at what time the actuations happened on the respective clients and decide from there. This can still benefit a killer player with a high latency because survivors of course actuate DH and pull pallets in reaction to the killer, so their timing depends on what they see, but what they see is delayed by latency.
To note though, I'm not actually sure that they did change anything about the validation, maybe it always worked by looking at client time stamps. I have just noticed that I (on a low latency connection) now get hit through DH and pallet pulls more often than I used to. And I have seen a lot less "overruled hit" instances from the killer perspective.
-
Very easy solution: Allow survivors to kill themselves in the dying state if only two survivors are left alive, or if all survivors are slugged. It's pretty terrible game design not to have this. The endgame design has some pretty terrible aspects altogether, such as hatch stand-offs still being a thing.
-
I see plenty Blights and Nurses bringing 4 slowdowns, busted add-ons, map offerings, and camping/tunnelling at 5 gens, against random solo lobbies. I will never understand the concentrated power of being a clown it takes to do that, let alone after thousands of hours. Same for 4-SWFs on comms with map offerings, toolboxes, instaheals and whatnot. Live a little, don't get so caught up in trying to "win" that you forget or forgo to actually play the game.
Of course, the real issue is BHVR never addressing or taking years and years to address even the most blatant and egregious of balance issues. You can blame the players all you want, it won't change much, if anything you'll get them to do these things out of spite. I have seen enough people that play like that even after 4000+ hours, apparently not bored of it all despite facing and destroying mediocre randoms most of the time. They won't change.
-
Ridiculous winstreaks like that are completely unheard of in any even remotely competitively balanced game. One of the reasons why they are possible in DbD is completely busted stuff that is at a player's/a group's disposal without the opponent necessarily bringing comparable stuff. Imagine if for instance in Counter-Strike it would be possible for people to just decide "I will start this match with an AWP", while the opponents are starting with the regular pistols. That is an inherent imbalance to the game in its design of being able to use different killers, perks, add-ons and offerings without the opposing side knowing what you are using, and how they can be completely skewed toward one side or the other in any given game. Some of the busted killer stuff simply has to be rebalanced, and for survivors SWF loadout restrictions would go the longest way to solve the issue, because what's really busted on the survivor side is not any singular perk or item, let alone in a group of a bunch of solos, it's the ability to bring up to 4 of each of them and coordinate their usage.
And yes, the matchmaking is also at fault for the ridiculous win% of players. Mostly it's the MMR cap, which catches a huge pool of players the skill/experience/tryhard disparity between which can be humongous. 400-hour amateurs that barely last 20 seconds in a chase facing 4000-hour tournament players that usually 4k at 3-4 gens is completely commonplace.
-
@Dionysus42 said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3277016#Comment_3277016
At the very least Yun-Jin and Zarina definitely aren't in their 'early 20s'. They both have had careers of some length, especially Yun-Jin. Further, if you actually bothered to read the character descriptions, you'd know Elodie is 28 at the very least as well. Funny how people upvote comments that are straight up wrong just because it fits their prejudgments. I'd note that all the female characters you ignored happened to be the non-white ones if I cared to make insinuations.
First of all, I used a "?" in that sentence. I actually did not bother to read character descriptions in detail, so I'm not sure whether we have confirmation of any female character's age. I was not asserting as much as a fact, I was mostly just wanting to highlight that all of the female characters are more on the younger side, while we have characters like Bill, Ace, Vittorio, Ash, that are clearly older, with grey hair and wrinkles. I'm also not sure what kind of "prejudgments" it would fit to notice such a trend. Let alone something about those "insinuations". If you bothered to read my second comment, I actually did mention Jane and Yun-Jin as characters that do seem more mature and that would at least surely not be in their early 20s, so I already defused my own statement (which again, was not a definite statement). But even they are early to mid 30s at most I'd think. Same for Zarina.
Either way, I stick to my point that it's odd to have no single female character that is clearly older, when there's multiple such male characters.
-
Eruption is OP on the strongest killers (most of all Nurse and Blight of course), and it is OP in 3-gen scenarios. The strongest killers need some rebalancing anyway and the devs should also long have looked at making sure maps can't spawn ridiculously tight gen clusters, as well as provide more effective ways to avoid and combat 3-gen scenarios. Another issue with Eruption is that it furthers the divide between SWF (with voice comms) and solo, since the former can semi-reliably avoid getting the worst of it.
On M1 killers however the perk is actually required to be as good as it is in order to make the gen kick meta viable. M1 killers regularly can't afford the time investment of going around kicking gens, at best they have to hope the chase is being led to gens they can then kick mid-chase, or that they can consistently and quickly get injures on people such that they can effectively play hit-and-run. In either case, their chases on average last significantly longer as well, meaning they often won't even get their Eurption to proc before a gen is finished, and this is particularly notable for the 3-gen scenario as well, because survivors that take a hit can use that to run as far away from the gen cluster as possible, and as opposed to a killer like Blight, committing to a chase on that survivor can then mean the loss of the 3-gen. Considering all of this, the powerful effect when Eruption does proc is needed for it to have enough of an impact with M1 killers.
My suggestion for an Eruption adjustment is this: Make it proc only if you down a survivor with a basic attack. Instead of causing the Incapacitated status effect, it blocks all affected gens, no matter whether a survivor had been working on it or not. Increase block duration to 30 seconds. Remove the cooldown.
With this, it obviously stops being as potent on killers that are already very strong (Nurse's blink hits need to be treated as special attacks), and the M1 killers that do have an ability with which to down survivors can at least still decide to use M1 instead. Plus Eruption obviously would remain active until you down a survivor using M1, so it's not like getting downs by other means would waste the perk. The perk blocking gens rather than causing Incapacitated means that SWFs won't be able to counter it and that nobody else can be working on the gen for the duration either. On the flipside, the survivors are free to do other things in that time, and while the generator does continually regress, that will obviously only be relevant after the 30 seconds, because blocked gens do not suffer from continual regression. A cooldown is not really needed, especially since the killer obviously cannot kick those same gens again while they are blocked.
-
@RainehDaze said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3277016#Comment_3277016
Where IS survivor granny?
Ha, doesn't even necessarily have to be a granny, a mature woman in her 30s to 50s would also be a welcome change of pace. Although old Laurie could have been cool of course. I guess Jane could be argued to be in her 30s, but seems more like mid or late 20s. Yun-Jin however does seem more mature.
I'm not actually personally all that interested in how diverse the cast is, but it's definitely a bit weird that it's exclusively young women. Surely they must have at the very least thought about older female characters, and yet never decided to introduce one. Seems like they might just think such a character would not sell well, and profits clearly are above diversity.
-
@Ayodam said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3277047#Comment_3277047
Restricting the perks people can use with their friends in casual gaming is unheard of. I cannot see BHVR implementing that.
Precisely if it's casual groups those players shouldn't care that much about not being able to stack all the good stuff. If anything it's fun to come up with unique builds with your friends and have like "personal" perks among them, and while lamenting the state of the strength of perks is one of my pastimes with this game, there's still certainly enough good ones to have both fun and competitive loadouts with 16 unique perks. Will reference this thread of mine for further discussion on that topic: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/304057/swf-loadout-restrictions/p1
I'm not that passionately interested in getting stuff like that implemented though, not least because I know they most likely never will. Upping or removing the MMR cap and addressing some of the most egregious balancing issues in particular would already go a long way to improve the game I think.
-
@Ayodam said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3277022#Comment_3277022
SWF isn’t going to receive nerfs (how would they even implement such a thing?) and they’ve de-prioritized the solo queue improvements initially promised this year. Peanits recently commented those changes were placed on the back burner but the devs don’t know when they’ll get around to them (again they were initially promised to roll out this year).
They started talking about solo improvements in like early 2018, likely earlier already. I'm not holding my breath, but I also don't really think solo buffs and compensatory killers buffs is the optimal route. SWF nerfs and compensatory killer nerfs are a way more viable option in my opinion because much fewer of the killers would even need nerfs, and because SWF nerfs are much easier to implement, as well as having a much more specific and limited impact. One simple and substantial way to nerf SWF would be loadout restrictions. Tournaments already go to show that much of the killer lineup stands a perfectly good chance to compete against even the best of survivor teams if there's loadout restrictions in place.
Beyond that it's really camping (and tunnelling) that is the major bane of the solo experience, so another viable route is to nerf camping (and tunnelling) and to compensate for that with buffs to other aspects of killer gameplay (such as chase strength and gen defense).
Improving the matchmaking such that there isn't such a severe disparity in abilities, experience and even just levels of "trying" as often anymore is of course also a major point, but yeah, they've supposedly only gone further and further down with their MMR cap.
I mostly only play SWF anymore these days if I play survivor so I'm not really all that concerned, if anything it's more so that I think the killer (and 4-SWF) experience can get too boring with how things currently are, but solo is a different playing experience and environment and something that can still be fun and has its unique qualities, so if it can be improved to fit the new game reality I'm all for that, and that's another reason why I think not trying to make solo more SWF-like but just reducing the power level of SWF is the way to go with regards to accomodating the "solo-SWF balance gap".
-
The MMR cap is so low that it basically doesn't matter, anyone even remotely okay at the game will arrive at the cap after some time. 400 hour "world record in shortest consecutive chases and longest time spent staring at camped hooks" "Megs" facing 4000 hour "sweats" on their "4k at no more than 2 gens done" streaks is about as commonplace as it had been in the rank-based matchmaking system.
Thing is in the past a duo SWF with two competent survivor players even without voice communications was enough to fairly reliably have challenging but competitive matches, where you'd get escapes pretty regularly. It could still be a really bad experience in individual matches, but overall it was alright enough and a welcome challenge. With the changes that have happened throughout the years however (inlcuding the rise in awareness that camping and tunnelling are the most effective killing strategies), these days it really does seem like 2 randoms are already much too great a liability. It's ridiculous, but yeah, in my experience you need at least 3 competent survivor players to consistently have competitive matches now that don't just often fall apart in the first few minutes, and you can only guarantee that by teaming up. (On the flip side of course, SWFs can still stack absolutely bonkers loadouts and face mediocre opponents a lot of the time as well.)
Solo buffs (and SWF nerfs) can't come soon enough, but they've been saying they want to do that for many years now, and they aren't even implementing the most rudimentary measures in that regard. Nor are they rebalancing camping, which is the most oppressive strategy for solo players. Hook grabs still being a thing in 2022 is just hilarious. They are evidently also not interested in making the matchmaking more strict, it seems that they have concluded bad match quality is less detrimental for player retention than longer queue times, even if it's just a couple of minutes.
-
Either way, by now we have multiple 30 or 40+ male characters (and perhaps even 60+, in the case of Bill), yet not a single female character that isn't in her early 20s? For how "diverse" of a cast BHVR is supposedly interested in creating, that's a pretty sexist trend!
-
Wallhacks are basically impossible to "prove" with third-person footage, which is also why they're the most popular "subtle" cheat. For experienced players they are fairly easy to notice, such as with survivors playing tiles in ways that would get them mindgamed all the time (rather than sit at checkspots where they can react to you with good timings and view angles, they sit dead in the middle of the tile where they can't see anything but still always have maximum distance whatever you do), or with killers going for the most unintuitive pathing/predictions or of course just finding you in places they have no business being. If you are experienced and good at the game, you will have an intuition for these things. Problem is you can't get a wallhacker banned manually since there's no guarantee even with multiple highly questionable instances.
I know for a fact there've been wallhacks around for years that are still not detected by EAC. We have to hope that BHVR improves their anti-cheat measures significantly, and/or that they work on a replay system, which with cheating could be much more readily identified and reported.
-
While it is vanishingly rare for me to end up on far-away servers, it does happen, and the removal of the ping indicator in the lobby makes no sense. Why is BHVR wanting to force people to load into matches in these instances? Just show us our connection to the server again.
In fact, ideally we would be able to see every player's ping in the lobby, including the killer's. Alas, we don't even get to see killer ping in the match...
-
I vaguely remember Peanits saying something along the lines of disconnects making for a difference of around 5%. Although I'm not sure whether this was before the instant DC penalties came into effect. 5% sounds about right though.
Would definitely love to see much more detailed stats. Why not give us graphs showing kill rates through the entire MMR range, and then further separated into solo, duo, trio, quad, different killers, and maps.
-
@Carth said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3206880#Comment_3206880
Invincibility on top of endurance? So I can bodyblock twice for my teammate and still have a third health state plus an exhaustion perk combod with old DS and the potential for a reset via DS in order to use DH for a total of four - five health states on unhook?
I agree with most of your points but that sounds absolutely ridiculous for swf unless it also comes with the stipulation that endurance and this invincibility state make you lose collision so you can't bodyblock with them.
First it has to be noted that those changes are meant to make tunnelling much less effective and attractive, something that does require pretty drastic changes to accomplish, and something that as I've said would of course have to be compensated for with buffs to other aspects of killer gameplay since the game simply isn't balanced for the idea of getting your first kill nine hooks into a match, not when both sides are comparable in skill and experience. A few of the killer characters can do that, but even those not very consistently.
I think having the 10 seconds of unhook protection be invincibility instead of endurance is important because currently, the killer can just hit the survivor off hook instantly and nullify BT, OTR and DH all at once, as well as things like Adrenaline, Renewal, For The People, and Styptics/Syringes. Hard-tunnelling killers will simply hit off hook and keep chasing without a lot of distance made, and so while the unhook endurance has thankfully rid us of "farming off hook", it has not made tunnelling any less prevalent (if anything it is more prevalent now, with DS having been nerfed). With invincibility instead, killers would have to always wait out the 10 seconds if they want to tunnel, and then still deal with potential anti-tunnelling perks.
But you're right, the unhooked survivor's collision and hit boxes should definitely be removed during those 10 seconds.
-
@ReverseVelocity said:
Depends, are they playing Doctor? If so, they miss all of them.
@Bedslamb said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3242809#Comment_3242809
often wondered why i miss more on the Doc than any other killer
Is this a thing recently? I don't remember ever having trouble on Doc, but just yesterday I missed two Doc lunges right out in the open, and I otherwise never miss lunges because after thousands of hours of playing I should know them down to the centimenter. Felt weird, but I chalked it up to having played Sadako before whose lunges can feel deceiving.
-
@Aceislife said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3242514#Comment_3242514
You actually see the difference clear as a day, 120 is much smoother than 60. However, if you have a 60hz display, it will only display 60fps, so there is literally no difference.
The second part isn't true. The more frames per second your system renders, the more recent the latest game info you get will be, regardless of your monitor's refresh rate. Not only that, but if you play without V-Sync, your monitor can display new frames as soon as they're ready even in the middle of an ongoing draw cycle, making things even better. On top of that, higher framerates mean faster processing of inputs (both physical user inputs and networked server "inputs"), as well as outputs (networked client info you send to the server). The entire game simulation in general improves with framerate "under the hood", which we'd notice even regardless of the amount of frames actually presented to us.
You will pretty much always benefit from higher framerates, not least because having an overhead can prevent some otherwise potentially disruptive frame drops. That said, there's obviously thresholds beyond which benefits are diminishing and miniscule. Decades of competitive gaming have shown that ~100fps/100Hz is about as much as you'd ever need, there are barely competitive advantages gained from going above that. Having a stable capped framerate is also beneficial as it provides a consistent experience, as opposed to higher yet wildly fluctuating uncapped framerates. Minimum viable framerate is usually tied to a game's tickrate (rate at which the server operates), particularly because updaterate (rate at which game info is being exchanged between the server and client) is naturally dependent upon this (server and client can of course only send out info if they actually have info, which they only do if they have calculated a more recent gamestate) - you want at least enough frames to be able to send out and process the maximum amount of networked game info per second. Pretty confident DbD has a tickrate and updaterate of at most 60Hz though, so 60fps is sufficient in that respect. And if you aren't running the game in "true" fullscreen mode (which 90+% of players most likely aren't, given that this - ridiculously enough - is not an in-game menu option in DbD), you will always have V-Sync due to desktop compositing, meaning the benefits of having a framerate that exceeds your monitor's refresh rate will be diminished.
@OP: No, as has been pointed out, the devs hard-capped the game at 120fps some time ago for some reason. Although I'm reasonably sure it's just a forced variable, people that can modify the backed-in variables can most likely get rid of this cap still, but that requires potentially malicious tampering. Either way, 120fps is more than enough for DbD, if you really are noticing some choppiness, you could set your monitor's refresh rate to 120Hz (or use G-Sync if you have it).
-
@Little_Kitten said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3240313#Comment_3240313
In this case, we might as well code the skill in question to be less effective on the strongest killers; this would prevent nurses from using it to play very dirty, while allowing much weaker killers to take advantage of it anyway ☺️
I know you are joking, but you actually have a point. Nurse is the most egregious offender in terms of this skill range disparity, where newer and intermediate players regularly perform worse than with any other character, average players still perform averagely at best, yet advanced and top players overperform massively. An attempt to balance Nurse could definitely see her be made much more accessible for newer and average players, yet cap her top potential. And I think that's precisely what BHVR was thinking with some of her add-ons that modify her base movement speed. Making her 4.4m/s and putting her blinks on a considerable cooldown similar to Spirit would be an obvious example of such a rework.
That said, I wouldn't like them watering down Nurse. My suggestion for balancing her (reducing post-blink lunge range by some %; https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3153211/#Comment_3153211) in fact makes her harder to play. I want her to remain a very unique and skill-rewarding character, and with that change she would require more precision because she doesn't have as long a lunge anymore that basically constitutes a "third blink" and makes up for inaccuracies in the blink mechanics and predictions, as well as nullify most survivor dodge/juke/fake attempts.
-
@Little_Kitten said:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/comment/3239268#Comment_3239268
You say that the best nurses do 4K all the time in tournaments, at a very high level.
I would like the name of those tournaments, so I can go watch their replay.
And I'm talking seriously here, because I'd be interested to see what it looks like in tournaments (whether it's on the survivor side, or the killer side, for that matter).
Some matches from the previous DbD League season:
The two (in)arguably best teams in the world facing off, 4k: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1554080870?collection=-YwKfrSu7Baxxw&t=0h46m16s
Again Trauma, one of the world's two best teams, 3k'd this time by a Nurse that is not even in the top 10 comp Nurses: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1512006733?collection=-YwKfrSu7Baxxw&t=0h0m9s
FallenArt's response? Of course a 4k: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1512006733?collection=-YwKfrSu7Baxxw&t=0h12m36s
Eternal again, 4k again (and then 3k by the other Nurse against Eternal, a top 2 team in the world): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1511995197
Some 4k: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1511992637?t=0h9m13s
One of the most seasoned teams of Russian comp players getting 4k'd (and of course responding with a 4k of their own): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1493702667
Exchanging Nurse 4ks: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1489102693
Another random example of exchanging Nurse 4ks, ongoing tournament (caster is Brazilian, tournament is international): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1626117734
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1618718692 - First part is again exchanging Nurse 4ks, and then yet another exchange of Nurse 4ks after the Billy set
You get the idea.
A few things to note:
I am not saying Nurse 4ks every single time in tournaments, please don't waste the effort trying to show me an instance where that happens. Not only does that have to do with the relative skill of the teams of course, but it's also not like it is literally impossible to escape against her, it's just that even at this level she has an average kill rate of like 3.X, which is ridiculous.
Yeah there are loadout restrictions in place, but the same is the case for the killer. Want to see banned perks?
Individual: - Coup de Grâce - Deadlock - Dissolution - Franklin's Demise - Hex: Blood Favour - Hex: Devour Hope - Hex: Haunted Ground - Hex: Undying - Lethal Pursuer - Play With Your Food - Starstruck Combined: - Bamboozle + Superior Anatomy - Bitter Murmur + Rancor - Enduring + Spirit Fury - Hex: No One Escapes Death + No Way Out - Hex: Thrill of the Hunt + Hex: Pentimento - Nemesis + Rancor
But wait, there's more. Bans on top of that for Nurse specifically:
Individual: - Dead Man's Switch - Eruption - Hex: Pentimento - No Way Out - Scourge Hook: Monstrous Shrine - Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance Combined: - Bitter Murmur + Hex: No One Escapes Death - Rancor + Hex: No One Escapes Death ADD-ONS Required: + Fragile Wheeze + Dark Cincture
So all other add-ons excluded from use.
Don't get me wrong, SWF without loadout restrictions is ridiculous (although in tournaments without restrictions a bunch of the killer characters have proven to still be able to compete with even that), but these restrictions are nothing but even the top-level comp community acknowledging that the killer side too has ridiculous stuff. Both need to be addressed.
What has to be kept in mind here is that these are some of the best survivor players in the world individually, teaming up, with years of practice and experience in that environment of playing as a team, which means high levels of coordination and communication. Not only are teams of this caliber vanishingly rare in pubs (basically non-existent; you can go years without even facing one group comparable to these), but even just the basic premise of having a 4-SWF with voice comms alone is very rare (4-SWFs make for around 5% of all matches last we got info on this, and a fraction in turn of that actually being together in voice chat), which is still worlds removed from the level these teams play at. Good Nurses are infinitely more common in pubs because all that requires is one good Nurse player... deciding to play Nurse. And the fact that good Nurse players can compete even with the absolutely ridiculous scenario of a top-tier voice-comm 4-SWF spells trouble for any pub group. 500+ 4ks in a row sort of trouble.
The main take-away here however remains that there just really is little consistent counterplay against good Nurses. Even the best survivors in the world can fall like flies and look like fools, and the best Nurses like FallenArt downright look like they are cheating, that's how impossible it can seem to do anything against them.
If you are generally interested in comp DbD and want to see some good gameplay and find out that much of the killer lineup can compete well even at that level, check out these channels, where some of the currently more stacked tournaments are going on: https://www.twitch.tv/dbdleague, https://www.twitch.tv/balticleague_, https://www.twitch.tv/phenombr, https://www.twitch.tv/championsofthefog, https://www.twitch.tv/crownperformanceleague - Note that I'm not saying the game is "killer-sided" or whatever, a reasonable take has to be vastly more nuanced than that, but it's certainly infinitely less "survivor-sided" than people sometimes like to make it out to be.
-
Top Nurses 4k in tournaments all the time. Even players with thousands of hours of experience of playing as and against Nurse in highly competitive contexts and in coordinated, practiced teams with voice comms do not manage to counter-play her well enough to regularly get even 1 survivor out. Now imagine Nurse in the actual base balance scenario that is also infinitely more common in pubs, which is a non-4-SWF group, without any coordination or communication. They get demolished 99.99% of the time. There are multiple Nurse 4k streaks spanning 300+ matches. Not even the most armed-to-the-teeth god SWF can get even 100 4-escapes in a row, they need to settle for 3-escapes at best, and even then they don't get as high streaks as Nurse.
If you were to let perfect AIs play against each other, Nurse would basically always win, her potential simply is that she can land every single (well, or every second) blink no matter what.
I guarantee BHVR knows this very well, it is completely blatant for them to see if they just look at the kill rates of the top % of Nurses. The higher you go, the more closely those kill rates will near 100%, and there's likely thousands of players with 80+% kill rates on Nurse. And most likely no other killer with as many players in that range.
It's been painfully obvious for years that Nurse needs nerfs. Same for 4-SWF. For Nurse, one major adjustment for the better would be reducing her post-blink lunge range somewhat, that would actually make counterplay more consistent against her since then she cannot easily adjust anymore for inaccuracies in the blink, which can occur both due to bad play on the killer side and/or good play on the survivor side. For SWF, loadout restrictions are the major adjustment I would want to see, not least because tournaments also go to show that a whole range of killers can compete perfectly well even against the best and most coordinated of SWF teams with loadout restrictions in place. But a bunch of killers still should still get some buffs of course.
Don't get me wrong, while super good Nurse players are something you will meet much, much more often than super good 4-SWFs on voice comms, they are still fairly rare. I don't think the existence of Nurse as she is ruins DbD, not even in the high MMR realm (although that's mostly because the "high MMR" realm is capped), but she is easily enough of a problem to warrant addressing, always has been. 90+% win rates and win streaks spanning hundreds of matches should never be able to exist, on either side, that's essentially impossible in any reasonably competitively balanced game yet in DbD it's fairly common for good players, and they should work on everything to remedy BS like that. Matchmaking is of course a major culprit behind this, but not the only one.
-
Players would definitely benefit from realizing that their hook states are resources to be invested into the round. Having no hook states when other people have died in a match is not necessarily a sign of having played well, often it's the opposite. Doesn't mean every scenario (or indeed every teammate) is worth taking hits or trading hooks for or whatever, but as a basic concept it is obvious that because all survivors can still escape even if every single one has been hooked twice and that matches can fall apart much easier if even just one survivor dies before the endgame, playing to spread out hook states as much as possible is always something survivors should try to do.
-
One obvious reason why the mobile game is getting a lot of stuff that the main game isn't is that they want there to be incentives for people to pick up the game on mobile, including those that already play on other platforms. If the games would be the same except for the obvious (controls and graphics), everybody would just see mobile DbD as inferior due to it having worse controls and graphics, playing it on mobile would always somewhat feel like a step down from "the real thing".
So one major reason why they don't ship those same things for "main" DbD is wanting to make more money on mobile DbD, even "double-dipping" on the same customers.